The role of leadership in salespeople’s price negotiation behavior

Salespeople assume a key role in defending firms’ price levels in price negotiations with customers. The degree to which salespeople defend prices should critically depend upon their leaders’ influence. However, the influence of leadership on salespeople’s price defense behavior is barely understood, conceptually or empirically. Therefore, building on social learning theory, the authors propose that salespeople might adopt their leaders’ price defense behavior given a transformational leadership style. Furthermore, drawing on the contingency leadership perspective, the authors argue that this adoption fundamentally depends on three variables deduced from the motivation–ability–opportunity (MAO) framework, that is, salespeople’s learning motivation, negotiation efficacy, and perceived customer lenience. Results of a multi-level model using data from 92 salespeople and 264 salesperson–customer interactions confirm these predictions. The first to explore contingencies of salespeople’s adoption of their transformational leaders’ price negotiation behaviors, this study extends marketing theory and provides actionable guidance to practitioners.     

Kommunikationstheorien auf dem Prüfstand

In 2016, German corporations invested 33.5 billion euros in on-the-job-trainings. Communication trainings, especially those for executives, play an important part in on-the-job-trainings and adult education. This study examines how basics of communication and media studies are used in the praxis of communication trainings. We ask which theories of interpersonal communication are being used in communication trainings for executives and for what reasons trainers choose specific theories. The answer can help us understand how executives view communication processes and which criteria make a theory praticable in the eyes of practitioners.First, we define communication trainings as part of on-the-job training and give an overview of research regarding the use of theories in trainings. Research shows that theories play an important role in communication trainings, but that the trainings lack theoretical depths and complexity. The existing research stems mostly from linguistics; the perspective of communication and media studies is missing. In addition, none of the existing studies considers criteria for a practicable theory.In a second step, the canon of theories of interpersonal communication in communication and media studies is identified via a content analysis of seven textbooks and encyclopedias. Overall, these books present 38 theories of interpersonal communication, but only eight theories are presented in three or more books. These eight theories, among them Symbolic Interactionism (Mead), the Theory of Social Systems (Luhmann) and the Four-Ears-Model (Schulz von Thun), build the canon of theories of interpersonal communication in this study.This canon is the basis for the main part of our study. Sixteen communication trainers were interviewed, using the method of qualitative expert interview. The trainers answered questions regarding their professional background, typical courses of training, their goals in trainings, the role of theories in trainings, requirements of the executives being trained and the exchange between colleagues in the occupational field.Results show that trainers use about 15 to 20% of the training time to convey theoretical basics. The Four-Ears-Model by Schulz von Thun dominates the examined trainings. Scientists regard this communication-psychological model as being rather popular scientific. Still, every interviewed trainer uses it. This finding shows that most trainers regard communicational misunderstandings as a result of the four-dimensional character of a message (Who is the sender? Why is he talking to me like that? What are the facts about? What shall I do, think, feel based on the message?). The Communication Axioms by Watzlawick are used as the second most common approach.Apart from theories of interpersonal communication, the trainers mentioned several psychological methods and approaches with therapeutic traits, like Transaction Analysis (Berne) or Active Listening (Rogers).The explorative findings suggest that the trainers chose the theories they use—especially the Four-Ears-Model and Communication Axioms—because it is easy to interlock these theories and the praxis of communication trainings, because they are comprehensible and easy to use in examples, and because they show the relativity of communication processes. Moreover, trainers use theories to explain human behavior and the sources for misunderstandings.These criteria alone do not explain the trainers’ theory choices, though. It became clear in the interviews that factors of socialization, like advanced training for the trainers, play a major role in influencing their training content. Trainers teach the theories which they themselves learned in further education programs becoming a trainer, and they barely look out for new and/or alternative theories.We recommend that communication trainers look for other theories in communication and media studies, like the Symbolic Interactionism. This theory complies with the trainers’ criteria for good theories. Communication and media scholars on the other hand should work together with educational institutions and advanced training to improve the transfer of their theories into the praxis of communication trainings.     

Local tax interaction and endogenous spatial weights based on quality of life

This paper studied the role of municipal quality of life as a driver of strategic tax interactions among local governments. A number of studies point out the existence of strategic interactions using spatial econometric models in which the spatial weights are mostly based on non-economic criteria or basic economic variables such as per capita gross domestic product (GDP). We propose the more sophisticated well-being indicator of municipal quality of life as the driver for these interactions. To deal with the potential endogeneity, we rely on instrumental variable estimators. The empirical analysis focuses on the main local tax in Spain (property) and on municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, and it confirms the relevance of differentials in quality of life for the understanding of tax choices.     

Place attachment,host–tourist interactions,and residents’ attitudes towards tourism development: the case of Boa Vista Island in Cape Verde

A clear understanding of residents’ attitudes towards tourism development and its determinants is a crucial pillar for designing tourism development strategies to promote sustainable development. The literature on the influence of host–tourist interactions and place attachment on residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in developing countries is still scarce. To extend knowledge in this field, this study aims at developing and testing a structural model to examine direct and indirect causal effects of place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive and negative tourism impacts on the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in an island tourism destination – Boa Vista Island in Cape Verde. Results suggest that the residents’ attitudes are positively affected by place attachment, host–tourist interaction, and perceived positive impacts; and negatively affected by perceived negative impacts. Host–tourist interaction emerges as the strongest (direct and indirect) determinant of the residents’ attitudes towards tourism development. Moreover, although both positive and negative perceptions of tourism impacts have significant impacts on the residents’ attitudes, the influence of the former is stronger than that of the latter. The paper ends with relevant theoretical and practical implications to promote positive residents’ attitudes towards tourism development in Boa Vista.     

Internalization of externalities and local government consolidation: empirical evidence from Japan

The fact that jurisdictional consolidation overcomes externality problems in the provision of local public goods is one of the best-known benefits of consolidation in the theoretical literature. Nevertheless, previous studies provide little evidence of how public service spillover effects influence consolidation decisions. This study empirically tests the hypothesis that spillovers induce consolidation, using voting data on the consolidation of Japanese municipalities. The extent of spillovers is measured by estimating the demand function for public goods with externalities. It is found that residents of the municipalities that can internalize a large amount of public goods spillovers through municipal consolidation tend to favor consolidation. This result supports the theoretical inference that spillovers in local public goods affect utility gains from jurisdiction integration, thus serving as one of the key impetuses for boundary reform. Moreover, after controlling for the spillover effects, economies of scale, population share, differences in median income, and unconditional grants can help explain consolidation preference.     

Political uncertainty,risk of Frexit and European sovereign spreads

Using data from a prediction market (crowd-based forecasts), we build a daily measure capturing the risk of Frexit related to the 2017 French presidential elections. We study how unexpected changes in this new measure of political uncertainty in France affect European sovereign spreads vis-à-vis Germany. We show that our uncertainty proxy drives not only the French sovereign spread but also the spreads of those EU countries deemed the most vulnerable to the risk of desegregation of the Euro Zone. These results suggest that specific political uncertainty affects short-term investor’s expectations and may outweigh other economic determinants of sovereign spreads shortly prior to high stake elections     

Embedding multinational firms in regional business systems: neoliberal and social‐democratic models in Spain

The paper analyses how regional actors have mobilised to attract and retain foreign direct investment in two Spanish regions with different political approaches to the management of economic issues, including industrial relations. These regions are Madrid, the main pole of attraction of foreign direct investment in Spain, and Asturias, with a large tradition of heavy industry and a greater dependence on a small number of large employers. It finds the regions have adapted to international competition in substantially different manners and considers the alternative reasons why this might be the case, highlighting the role of organised labour both in the inward investment regimes themselves, and in shaping the nature of the different compromises they involve.